In the house group chat, usually a scroll of memes, reminders and dinner plans, one of Jack Kankiewicz’s roommates dropped a screenshot of an article about President Trump’s tariffs to global trading partners announced on April 2.
Mr. Kankiewicz and his roommates debated the tariffs’ possible effects, and then returned to their usual discussions, with one roommate confirming that they would indeed be getting McDonald’s before seeing “A Minecraft Movie.”
Previously, tariffs were something Mr. Kankiewicz might only expect to hear from his friends majoring in political science. But since Mr. Trump’s announcement, he said, it has entered his everyday lexicon.
“My roommates and I have been tapping in a little more,” said Mr. Kankiewicz, 22. He realized he didn’t have a full understanding of tariffs, so he did some internet research to figure out how they might affect him, finding speculation on the rising prices of goods and a worsening job market.
People in their 20s viscerally understand that an economy is not solid matter on which to stand. They saw their families go through the 2008 financial crisis in elementary and middle school, then the Covid pandemic in high school and college.
Over the last two weeks, with tariffs announced, then suspended, the stock market swinging with each announcement’s wake, many young adults have begun considering changing their habits around spending and saving to prepare for an uncertain economy.
After completing his last semester of a film production degree at the University of Missouri, Mr. Kankiewicz plans to move to Cleveland, where he can live with an aunt and uncle who have offered him a place to stay. He hopes to save up six months’ worth of rent for an apartment while supporting himself with his media digitization business.
“My hope is to be self-employed following school, which is slowly becoming potentially a little more risky,” he said. “At the end of the day, I want to be able to afford groceries.”
After the tariffs were announced, he looked into cheap meal prep options and started thinking about stocking up on staples, such as rice, in bulk. He’s considering investing in a bike to save on gas for shorter trips. He owns a 2018 Toyota Highlander, a larger vehicle required for the loads of VHS tapes and boxes of photos he picks up as part of his digitizing work.
“It feels like a brave new world I’m entering,” Mr. Kankiewicz said. He said he got a bit overwhelmed with the shifting tariff policies and started checking the news about once a week. “Now that it’s so ambiguous and everything’s not immediately falling apart, it’s taken a back seat to other things.”
Mykail James, a Gen Z financial educator who runs the site Boujie Budgets, used to focus on general budgeting tips for her audience. She is now making videos to help people keep up with the recent changes that have been affecting those budgets.
Ms. James, 29, recommended people stay informed but also look at their budgeting habits to see where they can save or negotiate costs down.
In her online community, she said, people were wondering what the effects of the tariffs will be on their bottom line, how much more they’ll have to pay if they’re car shopping, and whether small businesses they enjoy will survive.
“I’ve seen more people wanting to turn to gardening and trying to find more ways to lean on community, especially when it comes to resources like getting access to cars, or buying homes, or finding adequate places to live,” Ms. James said. “I’ve seen more people promoting living with roommates and collaborating and combining funds that way, versus living alone or being siloed.”
Ms. James closed on a house in Baltimore in November 2024, and, having already been shocked by a $400 utility bill, is worried about seeing costs rising even more because of Mr. Trump’s tariffs.
Kenna Srivastava, 21, recently sat working with a friend, who looked up from reading an article on his phone after the initial tariff announcement to say, “Oh my gosh, iPhones are going to go up to $2,300.”
“I was like, ‘OK, guess I’m keeping mine until the next administration,’” said Ms. Srivastava, who graduated last year from Rutgers University New Brunswick. “If we have tariffs that are significantly increasing the prices of our everyday items, we’re just going to buy higher quality items and hope they last.”
With Mr. Trump constantly shifting his policies, she said it’s been hard to keep track of the news. She pays more attention to the stock market. When she sees a change, she checks the headlines.
Ms. Srivastava, of New Providence, N.J., and her friends are in their first full-time jobs and have disposable income for the first time in their lives. She said they have been moving on from buying cheaper goods, such as fast fashion from Forever 21, to shopping more at places like J. Crew to buy clothing that they will be able to wear longer, even though it’s more expensive.
“J. Crew makes clothes that are harder to place in a particular time,” she said. “I think with Forever 21, you buy a shirt and it’s good for, like, a summer, and then it’s out of style for the next season.”
Ms. Srivastava said she worried that if people’s entertainment budgets were also squeezed, it would only exacerbate the loneliness in her generation. If the cost of leaving the house to eat, drink or be entertained becomes prohibitively expensive, people will stay home more often, she fears. She said she now expected to spend around $25 to $30 for a meal out with friends, but said if the cost went up to $50, she would see them less often.
Gabe Guidarini, a political science major at the University of Dayton, in Ohio, said he was thinking farther ahead, when he believes tariffs will have incentivized the reshoring of manufacturing jobs to the United States.
“I’m hugely in support of the tariffs,” said Mr. Guidarini, 20, a junior. “I live right here in Ohio, where this is a state that’s been totally destroyed by globalist economics over the past several decades. Most of the manufacturing jobs in these communities have been taken away to Mexico and China, and the result is utter economic ruin in these areas.”
He had doubts about the chance of a recession, even before Mr. Trump rolled back some of his tariffs, a move Mr. Guidarini viewed as a negotiation strategy. He said he saw some of the tariff pauses as time given to help companies move manufacturing to the United States. Any short-term economic pain, he argued, was necessary for the greater good.
In the meantime, Mr. Guidarini said he was continuing his education, working and trying to save as much as he can — as he has been doing all along.
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